Movie vs. Book

From the world of art: ,,Girl with a Pearl Earring’’'

Story of a book vs. story of a film

Life is a great story, that it’s made of nice small other stories. I personally love good stories because they have the power to make life more interesting. One of my favorite stories, ,,Girl with a Pearl Earring’’ is a historical novel written by Tracy Chevalier.

It made me dream, more than usual. The novel was inspired by Delft school painter Johannes Vermeer’s painting ,,Girl with a Pearl Earring’’. This particular book made me take a different look at this Dutch painter  work. It made want to learn more about the artist and his art. It is such a good example of how art can be express in more than one way. We have a book, a film and a play and it all starts with Vermeer’s painting…

The novel was adapted into a 2003 great film, with Colin Firth and Scarlett Johansson   (Griet - the girl with a pearl earring), and a 2008 play of the same name. One of my favorites, Colin Firth has a great and unic interpretation of this role. A great actor plays a great painter… Chevalier’s inspiration for the book was a poster of Vermeer’s painting. She notes that the ,,ambiguous look’’ on the girl’s face left the ,, most lasting impression’’ on her. She describes the girl’s expression ,,to be a mass of contradictions’’. She began to think that girl had directed all these emotions  at the painter, and began to think of the ,,story behind the look’’.  Chevalier’s research included reading the history of the period, studying the paintings of Vermeer and spending several days in Delft. As ,,Time’’ magazine critic Sheppard writes, Chevalier presents ,,an exquintely controlled exercise that illustrates how temptation is restrained for the sake of art.’’

Published in the USA in January 2000, the book became a ,,New York Time’’ bestseller. In Chevalier’s fictional account, the girl with a pearl earring, the character called Griet, is the model for Vermeer’s painting. This is one of the best-loved paintings in the world, but most importantly, it is a mistery…     

Story of an artist. Story of his art

Specialized in domestic interior scenes of middle-class life. Vermeer was a moderately successful provincial genre painter in his lifetime. He seems never to have been particularly wealthy, leaving his wife and children in debt at his death, perhaps because he produced relatively few paintings.

Vermeer worked slowly and with great care, using bright colours and sometimes expensive pigments, with a preference for lapis lazuli and Indian yellow. He is particularly renowned for his masterly treatment and use of light in his work.Vermeer painted mostly domestic interior scenes.

"Almost all his paintings are apparently set in two smallish rooms in his house in Delft; they show the same furniture and decorations in various arrangements and they often portray the same people, mostly women." Being part of a artistic movement called Dutch golden age Baroque, 34 of works have been universally attributed to him.

Story of a masterpiece

Girl with a Pearl Earring is an oil painting by 17^th century (1665).  It is a tronie of a girl with a headscarf and a pearl earring. The painting has been in the collection of the Mauritshuis in The Hague since 1902. 'The head' that was not meant to be a portrait, depicts a European girl wearing an exotic dress, an oriental turban, and a large pearl earring. In 2014, Dutch astrophysicist Vincent Icke raised doubts about the material of the earring and argued that it looks more like polished tin than pearl on the grounds of the specular reflection, the pear shape and the large size of the earring.

After the most recent restoration of the painting in 1994, it was discovered that the dark background, today somewhat mottled, was initially intended by the painter to be a deep enamel-like green. This effect was produced by applying a thin transparent layer of paint, called a glaze, over the present-day black background.

However, the two organic pigments of the green glaze, indigo and weld, have faded.

As a conclusion, I can say that is remarkable how a painting has the power to survive in time, to change something, and even to do more: inspire – writers, movie directors, actors, other artists… That is the power of true art, and that is amazing !